A new article in Business 2 Community has chosen to take a look at calculating ROI when using a CRM system.Interestingly, within the piece are several tips highlighting the different mistakes that are typically made when using the system.These are well worth further exploring:

Information silos

Businesses will often simply replace one set of information silos with another taken from the CRM silos.There is no thought to the process, and often the new set of data is no more valuable.

Understanding the business process and how this is implemented is key to the success of not only the implementation but giving your Customer the experience they deserve.

No reconciliation

Another very common error is the fact that there is often no reconciliation between the goals of sales and the goals of marketing.These are two key departments within the CRM process, and it's vital for them to be able to co-exist.

CRM can help join this departments and business processes together but thought needs to be given on the tools to be used and the implementation, using tools like eCampaign from MyCRM can help create follow-up phone calls for sales teams from marketing activities.

Managers create reports for the sake of it

Whilst there's little denying the fact that effective reporting can offer genuine insight capable of increasing sales and improving the process, it is still vital to ensure that this reporting is being conducted with legitimate aims, rather than just for the sake of it.

Within tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can easily create Dashboard activities to give a snapshot of activity without running and producing lengthy reports.

Managers not accepting the CRM data

On some occasions, it's an unfortunate fact that managers stuck in their ways will actually ignore the data that the CRM software has provided, and instead continue to try and control the conversations in a pre-CRM manner, this is down to engagement and end user training of the new implementation.

Not actually using the system

Some businesses still believe that a CRM system is the key to sales success, and it is.However, it has to be used effectively: if it just sits there, then not much of interest will take place. The CRM implementation for your business is not about the purchase of a new bit of software but very much about bringing all teams together to share collaborate and work effectively placing your customer at the centre of your organisation.

MyCRM has over 20 years’ experience in understanding how CRM as a technology and CRM as a process can work in business and has therefore developed a number of off-the-shelf extensions to enhance CRM productivity.

We offer from our own fully managed datacentre a licence per user Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, you can see more about using MyCRM as a managed service here: http://hosted.mycrmgroup.com/

As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) we offer a range of pre-built application extensions for your Microsoft CRM Solution. You can get access to a range of products for Microsoft Dynamics CRM from the MyCRM download centre here: http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com after registering for an account.